The Runes of Soshychne

Having discussed the Rozwadów spear here, we can turn to another similar artifact found nearly 80 years before the Rozwadów spear.

The spear in question was found in Soshychne (Ukraine) (Ukrainian Сошичне, Polish Suszyczno) in the spring of the year 1858.  Soshychne was then a village. The bigger town is Kovel (Ukrainian Ковель, Polish Kowel) southwest of Soshychne. Since Kovel is also easier to pronounce, the spear or really just the spearhead became know as the Kovel spear shaft or the Kovel spearhead if you will.

The spear was found, apparently by a farmhand, when a hill had been cleared for ploughing for the first time (well, first time in the then memory). The hill was situated in the direction of another village to the SW – Lychyny. Apparently, the local land tenant, a Mr. Jan Szyszkowski, for whom the farmhand probably worked was on site at the time and managed to preserve it. In the summer of the same year he was visited by a relative, one Aleksander Szumowski, to whom he gifted the artifact. Szumowski seeing the incrusted runes got excited and suggested continuing in the area with regular excavations. (As a result of these, in 1859 a hammer head was also discovered in the same location). In fact, if you look at the above picture in detail (here is another highlighted version), there appear to be there several splotchy areas which may have resulted from water flows or other reasons but which may merit further investigation.

In any event, in the meantime, Szumowski reports that he travelled to Kiev in 1859 and then in 1862 to Warsaw and Cracow to figure out what the runes which were clearly visible on the spearhead meant. There was issued, apparently, a brief newspaper publication (by a certain Kraszewski with whom Szumowski consulted), describing the discovery but, other than that, nothing major happened and no one took up the story. Szumowski hypothesized that the lack of interest in his discovery may have been caused by the then raging controversy around the so-called Mikorzyn Stones (Germ. Mikorzyner Steine) which came to light in 1855 and which featured runes. After a few years of examination, many analysts concluded that these were fakes. (You can see them here at the Cracow Archeological Museum). So what Szumowski suggests is that the scientific world did not want to get burned by reveling in the discovery of yet another allegedly ancient runic artifact.

He then notes that, after that initial disappointment, he was forced to actually give up possession of the spearhead. Whether he pawned it off for money and then got it back is uncertain. In the meantime, in 1865, another spearhead was found in Dahmsdorf-Müncheberg in Brandenburg and Szumowski began to look for another opportunity to publicize his finding. At first, he wanted to publish the discovery of the runic spearhead in the Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie in Berlin, a task which the Kiev Archeological Congress offered to help him with. Szumowski began to correspond with the Danish runologist Wimmer who rejected the initial markings on the right side, read the writing right to left and concluded that the spear bore the name of the owner, namely, ARI[D]S. The “D” was hypothesized by Wimmer since he hadn’t previously encountered a rune like that. Szumowski disagreed with Wimmer in the latter’s rejection of the rightmost letters.

After all this travel, discussion and correspondence, the matter was finally brought to publication by Szumowski but not until 1876 in the Polish publication, Archeological News (Wiadomości Archeologiczne), volume 3.

Once it made its debut in Polish archeological literature, it came to the wider notice of German archeologists and a description was published in 1879 in volume 2 of the Materials for the Prehistory of Man in Eastern Europe (Materialien zur Vorgeschichte des Menschen in ostlichen Europa) published by Albin Cohn and Doctor Christian Mehlis. It was from that publication that the most well-known pictures of the spearhead come from. They also point out similarities to a spearhead catalogued by Dmitry Yakovlevich Samokvasov.

Another relevant publication was the 1886 article in the Polish “Physiographic Diary” (Pamiętnik Fizjograficzny), volume VI, part IV which also provided this detailed  picture.

The spearhead itself was kept in Warsaw after that until WWII when it was stolen by the Nazis and disappeared – at least for now.

A few observations are in order:

• In their discussion of the Szumowski find, Cohn and Mehlis raise the possibility that the Mikorzyn Stones are, in fact, not fakes. I’ll leave it at that.

• It is not at all clear what the writing on the spear says. It has been read as TILARIDS but that assumes that the “O” looking symbol really is a “D” and that you read this from right to left. One could also read SOIRALIT or SDIRALIT. All that assumes that these other letters are clear.

• There are several interesting symbols etched on the spear. Generally speaking, there is:
  • a circle with a dot inside repeated several times and a double circle with a similar dot,
  • there is a line marking that at least in the German article appears curving downwards,
  • there are two symbols that appear to look like swastikas (which, by the way, the authors interpret either as luck talismans or as, perhaps, a symbol of fire by comparing the sign to the image of two sticks being rubbed together to get fire), but
  • on closer examination, at least one of them seems to look more like the Polish air force “chessboard,”
  • there are several etchings next to one another,
  • interestingly, there is a symbol shown once on each side which looks like the number “2” with another “2” sharing a base and etched inverted. The same symbol, albeit in that case, shown parallel, as opposed to inverted (though connected with a similar inverted set of the same parallel 2’s) is shown on the Dahmsdorf-Müncheberg spear. Strangely, ignoring the curves, what appears in this version is the rune for “S” (albeit newer than the rune actually shown in the writing so I assume that this is a bit of a fluke).

Note the number “2” that is otherwise visible. The “lightning” “rune” combined with that “2” makes it tempting to look at Thor/Piorun or, if you will, Taranis/Taran. Notably, Jupiter too comes into play as the staff of Jupiter, the planet’s symbol, contains that same “2”. Note too that the “staffs” on each side are mirror images of each other.

The other symbols can be interpreted as solar and, perhaps, as a moon symbol too. Arguably, there is also a fire symbol in the chessboard/swastika. Perhaps, one side can be interpreted as containing a set of solar/fire symbols and the other (the side with the writing) as containing a set of lunar symbols.

Of course, the Arabic or Hindu numbers had not been introduced to Europe at that time yet – their first known Western use being in the Codex Vigilanus of the 10th century.

The Indian Devanagari number “2” is similar but that cannot be taken back before the 7th century. Before that the Indian number system has sticks for the number two like the Romans.

Another possibility is that, the rune writer was using a form of the Greek beta (ultimately, Phoenician “beth”). That letter, being the second letter of their alphabet was used to designate the number “2”.

But perhaps the most promising lead is the Sarmatian. The following comes from Tadeusz Sulimirski‘s work on the Sarmatians by way of Deborah Schorsch‘s article on the Vermand treasure. That is, these signs may just be “tamgas”. The spear shafts are from Zadowice by Kalisz (two sides of the same spear), Jankowo by Mogilno, Kamienica by Jarosław. Another example of the double “2” may be on a spear from Pudliszki near Leszno.

Here is an example of folk embroidery from the town of Perebrody in Ukraine by the Belorussian border – note the base.

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